After flirting with it for a bit, we're finally sleeping in West Virginia, although we did pass into Kentucky a couple more times right before reaching the town.
Today was a beautiful scenic ride down the Sandy Tug Fork River (or just "The Tug") which makes up the Kentucky / West Virginia border. We only did 48 miles, but had 1,300 feet of climbing despite following the river. We arrived around 1:30 pm despite our usual 8:30 leave time, and had 3:29 on bike. This allowed for some nice resting and exploring of the town.
One guy did "roll coal" on a couple of us, which is where you downshift your diesel just right and belch black smoke over people. He didn't get us bad though, and 99% of the drivers have been really good to us.
That said, West Virginia is effed. I knew this area was hit hard when coal went bust but it's a whole different thing to see it first hand. There are needles along the road, and this area has twice the national overdose average, and is the worst place in the country for Opioid abuse - caused by a mix between the crashed economy and the frequency of manual labor jobs.
Williamson would be a perfect set for a zombie movie. We walked around it quite a lot, and it clearly used to be a thriving town but now it's crashed. It's straight out of The Walking Dead - trees growing out of buildings, almost every store closed, burned out high-rise apartments just sitting empty - it's rough. There are also lots of pro-coal, pro-Trump, and anti-EPA signs. Check out the photo post.
On the bright side, shit's cheap here. We had a good meal at a pub and it was very affordable. Good beers only $2.50 and $3 a pint. So, there's that. We're staying in a duplex owned by a church across the street. It's pretty great, no forced social interaction! Yay! It's a nice break.
Tomorrow we turn away from the river into the huge hills we've been looking at all day . WV is 75% wooded according to some buzzfeed-style list. We're a little worried about the climbs, we have 3,000 feet of climb tomorrow over 60-70 miles, and it's been hot hot hot hot and humid. We'll get an earlier start than usual I think. After tomorrow we have a 3,600 foot day and then a 5,000 foot day. Woo!
ILYI
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